Have you considered how much of your business is on your computer? Customer data, financial records, emails, marketing documents and so much more. How would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and everything was gone? Learn how you can protect your business critical data from David Friend, co-founder and CEO of Carbonite Online Backup.

Carbonite launched its Online Backup service in May 2006. Carbonite's industry-first offer of unlimited backup space for a flat low price revolutionized the market for consumer and small business backup services. Since 2006, the company has backed up more than 25 billion files, has restored more than 2 billion lost files for its customers and has a large data center where capacity is measured in petabytes. There are Carbonite users in more than 120 countries.

David Friend, Chairman & CEO, Co-founder of Carbonite, has been a successful technology entrepreneur for over 25 years. He previously co-founded five companies: Sonexis, FaxNet, Pilot Software, Computer Pictures Corporation and ARP Instruments. He has been featured in USA Today, Tech Capital, The Boston Globe, Mass HiTech, Fortune, Forbes and Tom Peter's best-selling management book, The Pursuit of Wow!

David can respond to questions like:

Should I have online backup or local backup?

How do I prepare my files in the event of a natural disaster?

Will the files I store be secure and kept private?

Ask Dave your question today and then join us on April 7, 2:00-3:00PM EST for his response. You can even ask him a question during the event, although he may not get to all of them.

Carbonite backs up your PC over the Internet to RAID6 servers. The advantages of online backup are 1) cost: $55/yr for unlimited space per PC, 2) simplicity: it just works constantly in the background any time you're connected to the Internet, 3) mobility: it works anywhere you're connected to the Internet whether office, home, Starbucks, etc., 4) safety: external hard drives and DVDs are not offsite. If you want to protect against fire, theft, etc., you need to get your backups away from your computer, 5) reliability and security: Everything is encrypted before it leaves your PC -- we can't and don't want to see user files. RAID6 servers, such as those we use to store your data, are about 30 million times more reliable than a typical hard drive.

But one thing I forgot to mention that is a very important feature of online backup is the ability for you to access your backup from any PC. I used this feature myself a few weeks ago: i was on a business trip and discovered that I had left my powerpoint presentation on my office computer. I found a PC in my hotel's business center, accessed my backup using a web browser, printed it off, and was back in business.

Good news for anyone in this BOA session: If you sign up for Carbonite, enter offer code "BOA" and you'll automatically get 10% off, expires May 7th. $54.95 a year is the regular price for one year of Carbonite, unlimited capacity. $129.95 for 3 years. that's less than $4 per month.

One of my biggest fears when traveling on business for project work is that my harddrive will fail (or even worse, my notebook and back-ups will get stolen from the hotel room). Is it possible with Carbonite to access my stored data remotely in another country?

Yes, I love being able to get to my backed up files using Carbonite. I used to use Logmein.com to do a remote access to my PC, but now our IT people have firewalls that prevent that. So with Carbonite, i can use any browser to access and download any backed up file. Since Carbonite is unlimited, I basically have everything on my office PC backed up.

Community, please join me in welcoming David Friend from Carbonite. If you have any questions, login now and simply hit reply. The event is moderated so there will be a delay when you post your question. David may not be able to address all questions, but will try. So, post your question now. And don't forget to refresh your browser to see David's latest response.

JackZee: I think you're probably talking about security, i.e., how to keep unauthorized people from snooping on your files. We use a number of identifiers. First, you have to have an email address and a password to login and gain access to Carbonite. Some customers, like healthcare organizations, also like to keep their encryption key themselves. Also, Carbonite typically sends emails to the account owner whenever there are transactions, much as your bank would. So you know if someone has your access information.

Can you give a brief overview of the types of solutions Carbonite offers for consumers vs. businesses? Is the solution the same or different? I'm interested in doing backups for my personal files but do not need an over the top solution.

About 40% of Carbonite's customers are businesses. It's essentially the same product for either consumers or business users. We've had many companies with over 100 PCs just buy a copy of Carbonite for each PC. I've heard that it's saved them over 70% on their backup costs. but the other benefits are that you get all your employee's PCs backed up, not just the servers. And it works on the road, anywhere you're connected to the Internet -- a nice feature for laptop road warriors.

In May we will be offering a business-oriented version of Carbonite. Basically the same product, but with administrative features so that an admin can control all the subscriptions. If you're interested in being a beta, please send me an email: dfriend@carbonite.com.

I write software code. How often do you recommend I create a backup? I've been backing my code once a week Does your solution provide a "reminder" to back up? And is this programmable e.g. once a week, every hour, etc.?

Carbonite backs up continuously. Any time you write a new file to disk, or edit and save an existing file, Carbonite backs it up. We only back up the changes, so frequent updates aren't a problem. Carbonite does offer advanced scheduling options in case you don't want to back up continuously, but I don't see any reason why you would want to postpone a backup. i know that if I lost a whole day's work, i would be pretty annoyed. Carbonite automatically "goes to sleep" when you are using your PC, so that we don't impact your CPU or bandwidth while you're working. After a minute or so of inactivity, Carbonite goes to work catching up on the backups.

People will still back up locally to hard drives, network drives, etc. But the big change in backup is the availability of cheap, simple, online backup. There's a difference between a service like Carbonite that is primarilly designed to PROTECT your data, and file sharing services like Yahoo Briefcase, or photo sharing services. We allow you to access your backup from a web browser, but we don't encourage you to use Carbonite to, say, share photos with mom. Most of the "sharing" kinds of products are not really automated backup systems, they don't encrypt your files, and they don't have intelligent client software to manage the automated backup and recovery processes.

Every year 43% of computer users lose irreplaceable files. Due to theft, irreparable damage or data corruption, these files could be unrecoverable through conventional means.

Laptops are increasingly more common than PCs in businesses. Because of this, the possibility of theft increases, but only 3 out of 100 stolen laptops are ever recovered.

The average cost of recovering data on a 160GB hard drive would cost $1,500 from conventional data recovery companies. The costs escalate when considering the lost productivity. On average a single data loss incident will cost an organization $2,900, including both the cost of data recovery and the cost of lost productivity.

6% of all PCs will suffer an episode of data loss in any given year.

35% or more of all PCs sold to businesses are laptops, and 1 in 5 of these laptops will suffer hardware failure in the first 3 years.

About the only way to protect yourself is to be backed up. Before I had Carbonite, I used to back up to DVDs, but i didn't do it very often, I confess, because it was such a pain in the neck. If you install Carbonite, you can just put the whole issue out of your mind because Carbonite works continuously in the background. We put little green dots on every file and folder that is backed up. I wish I could show you a picture, but you can see examples on our web site www.carbonite.com. As far as corruption, Carbonite keeps multiple copies of your files going back 3 months. So if you try to open a file and find that it is corrupt, you should be able to open Carbonite and get a version from yesterday or whenever there was an uncorrupted version saved to disk. Versioning is a very handy feature of online backup.

Some people wrongly assume that backing up files to CD offers a permanent solution. However, the nature of chemicals used to manufacture recordable CDs gives them a much shorter lifespan than store-bought albums. In fact, even recordable CDs that are stored in dark, temperature-controlled rooms usually won't last longer than a few years!

Tape backups are a common business solution for offsite data backup. However, 34% of companies fail to test their tape backups, and of those that do, 77% have found tape backup failures.

And physical backups have other problems. How many times have you read about tapes disappearing from the delivery trucks. Or one recent incident where a whole truck load of backup tapes disappeared while the driver was in getting a coffee and doughnut.

A company that experiences a computer outage lasting for more than 10 days will never fully recover financially and 50% of companies suffering such a predicament will be out of business within 5 years.

Small firms are at an even greater risk when suffering major data loss. 70% of small companies that experience a major data loss go out of business within a year.

Can you tell us more about data recovery? So many times my computer has "crashed" or I've gotten a blue screen to find out that my work was wiped out. How can I use the solution to recover my files, some of them that may have even been corrupted?

If your computer crashes, that's exactly when you need Carbonite. Carbonite would allow you to recover anything that had been saved to disk prior to the computer crash, assuming that there was enough time for it to be uploaded to Carbonite. About 3% of all hard drives crash each year, so almost everyone has a horrow story like yours. My wife's PC crashed a couple of weeks ago, and i got everything back that she was working on up to a few minutes prior to the crash.

If your computer has crashed and you replace the hard drive or the entire computer, you reinstall Carbonite using the same email and password. Carbonite will automaticaly recognize that you are moving to a new drive or computer and ask you if you want to restore all your files. If you say "yes" Carbonite will bring everything back down and put them in the same folder structure that existed previously. If all you want to do is restore a couple of files, (for example, if you accidently delete or overwrite a file), then you can use the Remote Access feature with your web browser.

Data can be lost through hard drive crashes, theft, power surges, natural disasters, or accidentally deleting your own files.

Natural disasters can happen across the world without warning. Most people keep their external hard drives and DVDs in the same office or building as the computer they're backing up. So, should a disaster--hurricane, earthquake, fire--occur, both the computer and the data backup could be destroyed.

Hard drive failure is the leading cause of data loss, accounting for 38% of data loss incidents. Although hard drive manufacturers claim less than a 1% failure rate, recent research by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University found that a 2%-4% failure rate is more common and under some conditions the failure rate may reach as high as 13%.

32% of data loss events are caused by human error. This can be from accidentally deleting a file, incorrectly partitioning a hard drive, or poor airflow around a laptop or desktop resulting in overheating, among other reasons.

13% of data loss incidents are caused by software corruption, which might include damages caused by system software or other programs (e.g., a virus attack).

Dave - thanks again for participating on SBOC! Your bio shows that you have been a successful "serial entrepreneur" so I was wondering, how did you decide to get involved in this industry and why did you decide to start the company?

All the companies I've start have been based to some degree on person need. In the case of Carbonite, my partner's wife had her laptop stolen out of her car and she lost a couple of years of baby pictures. Then, the same week, one of my daughters had a hard drive crash and she lost the term paper she'd been working on for six weeks. We went looking for a good backup service that was inexpensive and simple. We couldn't find one. i like services that are simple and easy to understand. We just want to solve this one problem -- protecting your data -- better than anyone else.

We just released Carbonite for the Mac. It's been really well received by the Mac community. We also just released the Remote Access feature, which i mentioned above. And in the months to come, we'll be introducing a version of our product aimed specifically at small businesses. Lots more planned for later in the year, but I promised my marketing VP that I would not spill all the beans! It's been fun answering questions, and thanks to everyone who posted. Dave Friend, CEOCarbonite, Inc.

Dave, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing your expertise. Community, if you would like to learn more about Carbonite please visit http://www.carbonite.com/ and visit Dave's blog at www.carbonite.com/blog.

Also, don't forge that Carbonite is offering a special discount to SBOC members: If you sign up for Carbonite, enter offer code "BOA" and you'll automatically get 10% off, expires May 7th. $54.95 a year is the regular price for one year of Carbonite, unlimited capacity. $129.95 for 3 years. that's less than $4 per month.

Have you considered how much of your business is on your computer? Customer data, financial records, emails, marketing documents and so much more. How would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and everything was gone? Learn how you can protect your business critical data from David Friend, co-founder and CEO of Carbonite Online Backup.

Carbonite launched its Online Backup service in May 2006. Carbonite's industry-first offer of unlimited backup space for a flat low price revolutionized the market for consumer and small business backup services. Since 2006, the company has backed up more than 25 billion files, has restored more than 2 billion lost files for its customers and has a large data center where capacity is measured in petabytes. There are Carbonite users in more than 120 countries.

David Friend, Chairman & CEO, Co-founder of Carbonite, has been a successful technology entrepreneur for over 25 years. He previously co-founded five companies: Sonexis, FaxNet, Pilot Software, Computer Pictures Corporation and ARP Instruments. He has been featured in USA Today, Tech Capital, The Boston Globe, Mass HiTech, Fortune, Forbes and Tom Peter's best-selling management book, The Pursuit of Wow!

David can respond to questions like:

Should I have online backup or local backup?

How do I prepare my files in the event of a natural disaster?

Will the files I store be secure and kept private?

Ask Dave your question today and then join us on April 7, 2:00-3:00PM EST for his response. You can even ask him a question during the event, although he may not get to all of them.

Share insights

Most of the time, you just want to find content that has a particular phrase. Here are the easiest ways to find the content you want.

Enclose your search phrase in quotes. Search will try to find content with those words in the order you enclosed them. A search for "marketing advice" is going to return content with the phrase "marketing advice".

Search for content that has certain words, but not necessarily all of the words in order. This is the most basic search. Simply enter your search terms. For example: accept credit cards This will search for documents containing the words accept, credit, and cards

Using OR. The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document. To search for documents that contain either "web design" or just "online marketing" use the query: "web design" OR "online marketing"

Using AND. The AND operator says that the search should return content in which all of the search terms are present. To search for documents that contain both "web design" and just "online marketing" use a search like this: "web design" AND "online marketing"

We would appreciate having your voice in the Small Business Community. You can participate in a number of ways.

Start a discussion in our member-to-member forums. By participating in the Small Business Community, our members gain knowledge and connections that give them a competitive advantage in building a successful business. Take advantage of the collective experience and expertise of the community to get help with a specific question or business challenge.

To post your question in our community, in the “Ask the community” section, from the drop-down, select the category that you’d like to post to, then click the “Start a Discussion” button. If you simply want to introduce yourself to the community, please select the “Introduce Yourself” category.

Note: you must be a logged-in member of the community to post a discussion. Please login or become a member to participate.

Share your small business story. Do you have an interesting story to tell related to your small business? Have some advice for other entrepreneurs to help them avoid some of the pitfalls of small business ownership? We invite you to share your story with the Small Business Community. Click the “Share Your Story” link and simply answer the questions in our Share Your Story template.

Answer a question. Are you an expert in a particular area of running and growing a successful small business? Would you like to help other small business entrepreneurs by answering their questions? We would appreciate your expertise in the Small Business Community. Please click the “Answer a Question” link to see a list of the open questions asked by members of the community.

Bank of America is not responsible for user posts and other user content appearing on this website and does not endorse or guarantee the perspectives, the advice, the users, the businesses, or the products or services sold by any users or businesses that appear on this website.

Inc. is a registered trademark of Mansueto Ventures LLC fully licensed and Bank of America Corporation has written permission allowing usage to publish.